Chemicals Machine Health Solutions
Reduce Unplanned Downtime with Chemicals Asset Case Studies
Agitators
Agitator processes, whether vertically or side-mounted, are sporadic. Backlash in the gearbox stresses brackets and couplings. Without continuous monitoring, reliability programs may miss key insights, leading to costly failures and downtime.
- Potential Equipment Rebuild or Replacement Costs: Up to $150,000
- Labor: 2 Riggers and 2 Machine Repairmen, 6-8 hours, totaling over 32 individual man-hours
- Potential Product Loss: Depending on redundancies and product, up to $10,000 – $15,000 per hour
Canned Pumps
Canned pumps are vital in the Petrochemical industry for transferring hazardous liquids, with enclosed bearings that don’t require regular lubrication. Continuous monitoring is essential, as journal bearings can fail within 48 hours, making monthly inspections inadequate.
- Capital Expenditure (parts): $90,000 on average
- Labor: $10,000 16-24 Hours Downtime
Spent Acid Blowers
Blowers are crucial in the Acid Regeneration process, and maintaining assets like Turbo Blowers is essential but challenging. Downtime can halt production, with failure modes varying by process configuration.
- Unplanned downtime can cost up to $100,000/day
- Repairing & replacing parts can take multiple days
Cooling Towers
Cooling towers pose challenges for accessibility and monitoring, causing many maintenance professionals to overlook critical signs of impending failure. Such failures can disrupt various production processes downstream.
- $1,000/hour downtime cost
- $50,000 in equipment costs per failure
- $100,000+ cost savings per avoided failure
Dryer Blowers
Dryer blowers are vital in the chemical industry for removing moisture from products. Induced and forced draft fans provide a steady flow of hot air, facing challenges like blade corrosion and imbalance from material buildup, leading to premature bearing or asset failure.
- $5,000/hour Downtime Cost
- 4-8 hours Downtime
- Asset Cost $50,000
Screw Compressors
Screw compressors are essential for air supply and gas storage. Failures, often due to bearing issues, shaft misalignment, or lubrication problems, halt operations by losing high-pressure fluid. Optimizing running speeds is key to minimizing downtime.
- Compressor Rebuild: $80,000 4-6 weeks downtime
- Compressor Replacement: $240,000 15-17 weeks downtime
Air Compressors
Air compressors in a plant can cause significant energy waste and costly downtime due to unexpected failures. Air leaks increase demand, leading to higher energy use and more wear on compressor components.
- $60,000 Per year/ compressor
Achieve 3.6x more asset coverage with the only comprehensive platform to ingest Oil, MCSA, Pressure, Vibration, Legacy IEPE sensors, and Ultrasound into one software platform.
Chemicals Keynote
“If data and insights are to create any value, they must influence people and systems’ behaviors. That’s why culture transformation is part of the key. “
Prabhu Ramachandran
Digital Transformation Project Manager
Kaneka
Chemicals Case Study
166
–hours– of downtime saved
TRANSFORMING CULTURE IN THE DIGITAL BUSINESS LANDSCAPE
In today’s fast-changing manufacturing world, adopting digital transformation has become a vital strategy for companies striving to stay competitive. Beyond the buzz of technology and data-driven solutions, a crucial yet often overlooked aspect is the significant role that cultural change plays. Prabhu Ramachandran, a visionary leader and member of Kaneka’s Digital Transformation (DX) team, is at the forefront of driving this essential shift in the IIoT production and manufacturing space.
To learn more about Prabhu Ramachandran’s innovative approach to digital transformation in manufacturing and the impact of cultural change, click here to view the full story.
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Why KCF
$4B
customer savings
75k
hours of prevented downtime
24/7
hours of monitoring
How Our Chemicals Machine Health Optimization Platform Works
Manufacturers and producers in the energy sector have to keep a watchful eye on O&M costs, and every machine failure can cause that number to creep up. Traditional route- or time-based monitoring doesn’t capture smaller data anomalies that can alert your team to failure before it’s too late.
Our comprehensive machine health platform, wirelessly and continuously transmits machine health data to a central database from individual monitoring points on your assets. Its advanced analytics capabilities get to the root cause of machine health issues, and its human-in-the-loop architecture ensures compliance and correct action.
KCF Technologies Gives Chemicals Producers a Competitive Edge
Achieve your short and long-term performance goals with our team of engineers experienced in chemicals production asset health monitoring, root cause analysis, and problem-solving.
We’ll help you mitigate unplanned downtime, reduce maintenance and equipment spending, and increase productivity.
